User blog:Steelside/Draven Champion Review
Draven is the newest ranged AD carry added to League of Legends. I will explore his PROS, his CONS, and give some other notes on the way the champion feels. All of this is from my own, personal experience playing the champion. Feel free to agree or disagree with what I say in comments below. Scroll down for the Overview Summary (essentially a TL;DR). PROS *Draven's sheer damage output is ridiculously high, especially early game, because of Spinning Blade. Not only does the ability give bonus damage, but it also automatically procs Draven's DoT passive, further increasing his DPS. Late Game this DoT Passive will be dealing tons of free damage and Spinning Blade has the 'potential' (though very very difficult to do) to occur on every auto attack if you manage to have 2 at once. With 1 Spinning Blade, it occurs every other attack. This gives his a high skill cap. *Draven never has mana problems and should never have them. Due to the nature of Spinning Blade being recastable potentially unlimited times without using any mana. This also allows Draven to build defensive masteries and runes over utility mana regen. *Draven's W (his Attack and Movespeed steroid) refreshes cooldown when you catch his Spinning Blade, making him POTENTIALLY have a nearly unlimited 40% movespeed buff when chasing. CONS *Draven's harrassing ability has its limitations. Spinning Blade occurs on next attack meaning all his harrass is dealt from his attack range (550) without the potential to be higher. 'Harrassing' becomes extremely aggressive becuase of this and due to the nature of Spinning Blade's bounce back. The Blade bounces to lead Draven's movement (whatever direction he was going when it hit) so if you continue in the same direction you will never miss a pick up. This can put Draven into very bad situations very easily, however. *Draven is limited by his range. Characters like Kog'Maw, Caitlyn, Ashe, Urgot, and even Ezreal and Corki to some extent give him some trouble in lane. These characters can stop Draven's aggression fairly easily by either blinking/dashing away or by slowing. They can also then counter his aggression with free damage. Having an aggression friendly support like LuLu, Taric, Sona, Alistar, Blitzcrank, or Leona can alleviate some of this trouble and force the enemy carry to be much more passive or die. *In teamfights, Draven still has amazing damage output but is still limited by his range. He is not Graves that gets free defense stats in his passive, or Vayne who can ult and Tumble to avoid damage. He is not Ezreal or Corki who both have the same short attack range but have very good escapes and spammable pokes. All Draven has is Spinning Blade and his high DPS. Miss Fortune comes into a similar roadblock, but not as badly because with good positioning in a fight, MF can use Bullet Time and then proceed to clean up afterwords. Draven's ultI is not channel and deals decent AoE damage, but does not change the fact that he needs to be in attack range to deal damage. It does help that he can deal so much damage, however. With good positioning, Draven can absolutely demolish the enemy team. *His Stand Aside's utility is very low. It doesn't slow very much for very often and the knock-to-the-side effect does not help at all with killing fleeing targets. He does have a very nice movespeed buff in his W (40% for 3 seconds I believe). What I'm trying to say is that targets get away from you alot. You rely pretty heavily on allies to have CC to actually rake in the kills. Red Buff can alleviate this pretty effectively though. You CAN snipe with your ulti and your passive CAN finish off some kills though. OVERVIEW SUMMARY *Draven deals ludicrously high damage with Spinning Blade, but his regular auto attack damage is not up to par with other AD Carries. *He is super effective in the lane phase, especially when against a lane that lacks in sustain. He wins trades verses any AD Carry in the early game. Some carries will win lanes because they won't need to trade with him and instead poke him from farther than he can handle. *He is countered by range. Carries like Kog'Maw, Caitlyn, Urgot, Ashe, Ezreal, and Corki can give him some trouble especially when paired with supports like Alistar, Lulu, Janna, and Soraka because they can dissengage his aggression and allow their higher range carries to punish back for free. *He loses effectiveness as the game goes longer because of his low range and low survivability in fights. It's fairly unrealistic to catch Spinning Blades often and position yourself well in teamfights. Category:Blog posts